Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Pathos and examples
Relationship and emotions
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Pathos and examples
Pathos and Suffering in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Emotions allow humans to better relate to one another, as well as understand one another’s situations, especially when topics such as suffering come about. Suffering appeals to the pity feelings within people, and therefore allows people to better understand another’s situation and truly relate to other people. In the 21st century scientific novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot uses emotion to show how people have the ability to connect well with one-another and feel each other’s struggles, because of the many emotions and struggles most people have, and therefore importance grows for people to understand each other. Emotion allows people to understand the
…show more content…
Skloot shows how people can understand each other’s pain because of the emotions, which hold importance in how humans feel and care for one another. The cancer and the treatment feel extremely painful for Henrietta, and bring on new pains and suffering each day. Suffering proves very most common in people, whether from illness, sadness, pain, or a variety of other reasons, and the emotion behind the suffering allows people to relate to others’ pain. Suffering embodies more than just physical pain. Emotional suffering often seems just as painful as physical suffering. Skloot shows how the emotional aspect of suffering hits Henrietta when she emerges from a horrible situation, and only concerns herself with other people, specifically, her ability to have more children: “Toward the end of her treatments, Henrietta asked her doctor when she’d be better so she could have another child. Until that moment, Henrietta didn’t know that the treatment had left her infertile” (47). Skloot shows how ignorance and complete …show more content…
The entire Lacks family suffers, and feels deep emotion as they see Henrietta, their mother, sister, and cousin, suffer slowly and ultimately die. Deborah especially must endure prominent distress and misery as she has to grow up much without a mother, and also uncover the story behind the tragedy. The pain that Henrietta feels, largely passes to her family as they feel her pain as well. Families and friends always support one another, however in turn, they must experience and endure much agony because of the love they hold. When a person remains loved, the pain that they feel often passes to those who love them, as sadness and hurt always transfer to other members. As Deborah gives a speech and begins to speak to her mother, people can see the emotion and suffering as she says “we miss you mama,” as she goes on to speak to her mother and talk about how she thinks about Henrietta and how she wishes she could see and hold Henrietta in her arms, “like I know you held me” and talks about how she knows that “you deep in my soul, because I am part of you, and you are me” (221). Skloot shows how even watching somebody suffering, or feeling the loss of somebody can cause deep emotions and agony within people, especially families. Deborah must grow up without a mother, and endures the endeavor as she deals with the whole disaster of the death and the
All I can say is amazing information of your glorious and late Henrietta Lacks. This incedible women bettered our society in ways no common human could understand at the time because of how complex this matter was and still very much indeed is. I know there is much contraversy with the matter of how scientists achived immortal cells from your late relative, and I do strongly agree with the fact that it was wrong for these researches to take advantage of this incredible women, but I know it is not for me to say nonethless it must be said that even though it was wrong to take Lacks’ cells when she was dying sometimes one must suffer to bring joy to the entire world.
An abstraction can be defined as something that only exists as an idea. People are considered abstractions when they are dehumanized, forgotten about, or segregated and discriminated against. The scientific community and the media treated Henrietta Lacks and her family as abstractions in several ways including; forgetting the person behind HeLa cells, giving sub-par health care compared to Caucasians, and not giving reparations to the Lacks family. On the other hand, Rebecca Skloot offers a different perspective that is shown throughout the book. Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks describes the trials and tribulations the Lacks family has gone through because of HeLa cells and shows how seeing a person as an abstraction is a dangerous thing.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by: Rebecca Skloot has a lot of themes, but one that is most relevant in my opinion is the racial politics of medicine. Throughout the chapters, there were examples of how Henrietta, being African American, prevented her from receiving the same treatment as the white woman sitting right next to her in the waiting room. The story begins with Henrietta going to Johns Hopkins Hospital and asking a physician to check a “knot on her womb.” Skloot describes that Henrietta had been having pain around that area for about a year, and talked about it with her family, but did not do anything until the pains got intolerable. The doctor near her house had checked if she had syphilis, but it came back negative, and he recommended her to go to John Hopkins, a known university hospital that was the only hospital in the area that would treat African American patients during the era of Jim Crow. It was a long commute, but they had no choice. Patient records detail some of her prior history and provide readers with background knowledge: Henrietta was one of ten siblings, having six or seven years of schooling, five children of her own, and a past of declining medical treatments. The odd thing was that she did not follow up on upcoming clinic visits. The tests discovered a purple lump on the cervix about the size of a nickel. Dr. Howard Jones took a sample around the tissue and sent it to the laboratory.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of Henrietta Lacks. In the early 1951 Henrietta discovered a hard lump on the left of the entrance of her cervix, after having unexpected vaginal bleeding. She visited the Johns Hopkins hospital in East Baltimore, which was the only hospital in their area where black patients were treated. The gynecologist, Howard Jones, indeed discovers a tumor on her cervix, which he takes a biopsy off to sent it to the lab for diagnosis. In February 1951 Henrietta was called by Dr. Jones to tell about the biopsy results: “Epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, Stage I”, in other words, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Before her first radium treatment, surgeon dr. Wharton removed a sample of her cervix tumor and a sample of her healthy cervix tissue and gave this tissue to dr. George Gey, who had been trying to grow cells in his lab for years. In the meantime that Henrietta was recovering from her first treatment with radium, her cells were growing in George Gey’s lab. This all happened without the permission and the informing of Henrietta Lacks. The cells started growing in a unbelievable fast way, they doubled every 24 hours, Henrietta’s cells didn’t seem to stop growing. Henrietta’s cancer cell grew twenty times as fast as her normal healthy cells, which eventually also died a couple of days after they started growing. The first immortal human cells were grown, which was a big breakthrough in science. The HeLa cells were spread throughout the scientific world. They were used for major breakthroughs in science, for example the developing of the polio vaccine. The HeLa-cells caused a revolution in the scientific world, while Henrietta Lacks, who died Octob...
Henrietta Lacks is not a common household name, yet in the scientific and medical world it has become one of the most important and talked names of the century. Up until the time that this book was written, very few people knew of Henrietta Lacks and how her cells contributed to modern science, but Rebecca Skloot aimed to change this. Eventually Skloot was able to reach Henrietta’s remaining family and through them she was able to tell the story of not only the importance of the HeLa cells but also Henrietta’s life.
Imagine having a part of your body taken from you without your permission, and then having those cells that are a part of your body grow and are being processed in labs around the world and then ultimately being used for the highest of research. That is what happens to Henrietta Lacks. In the book, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, we see Henrietta Lacks and her families story unravel, the numerous hardships that they faced, and the shocking revelation that their relative cells were being used for research without her consent and theirs.
Although illness narratives are not novel or new, their prevalence in modern popular literature could be attributed to how these stories can be relatable, empowering, and thought-provoking. Susan Grubar is the writer for the blog “Living with Cancer”, in The New York Times, that communicates her experience with ovarian cancer (2012). In our LIBS 7001 class, Shirley Chuck, Navdeep Dha, Brynn Tomie, and I (2016) discussed various narrative elements of her more recent blog post, “Living with Cancer: A Farewell to Legs” (2016). Although the elements of narration and description (Gracias, 2016) were easily identified by all group members, the most interesting topics revolved around symbolism as well as the overall impression or mood of the post.
What is privacy? Well, it’s the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people. In terms of information, it is the right to have some control over how one’s own personal information is collected and used. This is a right that has been inherently protected by the U.S Constitution, agreed upon by the Supreme Court, and yet, issues around this very topic arise every day. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author Rebecca Skloot, addresses this issue in her story of the women behind the infamous HeLa cells. Her story shows that although privacy is a right that is inherently protected by the law, situations of injustice can still occur. Examples of this in the book include when Henrietta’s cells were given to Dr. Gey without any consent from Day, the situation in which Mr. Golde’s spleen was sold without his permission, as well as when the Lacks family were recontacted and mislead about the reasons they were tested years after Henrietta’s death.
Further, the issue of confidentiality is compounded by the fact that Henrietta was deceased at the time of the breach in confidentiality. “The dead have no right to privacy even if part of them is still alive” (Skloot, 2010, p. 211). Skloot clearly portrays the issues around the release of Henrietta’s medical records, breach of confidentiality, and the emotional impact this had on the Lacks family. Additionally, she addresses the impact that failure to inform Henrietta and her husband about the medical experimentation and questionable research that was being conducted on their eldest daughter Elsie had on the family. Furthermore, Skloot addresses examples of violations that occurred with other patients of bio-medical research, demonstrating
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Hence, The Wenders’ determination to protect their daughter in a hostile society, Uncle Axel’s willingness to love and guide his insecure nephew, and the telepaths’ devotion to their closely-knitted group remind us that no matter how corrupt the majority of society becomes, there will always be those who will keep alive the beautiful qualities that make us human. Thus, it is clear that Wyndham purposely incorporated loving relationships in the midst of suffering to keep alive our hope in the human race. Love is an unique quality that can emerge through hardships. The Chrysalids is meant to remind us that the power of this emotion can overcome despair.
In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many characters must adjust to the face of adversity to better their
An evident theme of grief is clearly ascertained throughout the novel. However, it can also be seen that Oskar relieves this theme and as the book comes to a close, so does it's apparent theme of grief. It was his own grief that permitted Oskar to amend the others from their grief and allow them to discover a life full of prosperity. For this reason, it is grief that unites humanity and gives society a sense of peace. Therefore, it is grief that is extremely loud but also what brings us incredibly close. Foer uses an assortment of characters to acknowledge a theme of grief that is slowly eliminated by Oskar’s uplifting spirit.
Emotion is a vague state that we experience when we are exposed to different events and circumstances in our lives, and it’s part of the qualities that make us human .We all experience emotion in different ways, and it affect us in everything that we do, it affect our thought process our livelihood and our daily action that comes in many different way. Hochschild reading help us understand how emotions are socially constructed because in our live we always try to suppress those emotions and that we sometime rely on people opinion to tell us how we should feel. Hochschild help us see what happen when our managing of emotion are sold as labor, and what define the value of our smile and what are the reason behind these emotions.
“To whom shall I tell my grief?” Grief must receive closure. Grief has the power to make the strongest person helpless. For an individual to share their grief they receive a sense of compassion instead of endlessly searching for answers. In the short story “Misery”, Anton Chekhov effectively shows the desperation of communication through the character Iona Potapov and his mare. Chekhov illustrates the difficulty Iona faces to communicate his sufferings to the various people he speaks to as a sleigh driver. He accomplishes this through his style of writing, imagery, and the events that take place in the story.